Videos for June 19, 2008

For seven weeks, 15 KU students will get a taste of life as archaeologists through the university's anthropology field school. They spent ten days in Republic County before heading off to a prehistoric dig near Kanorado and a Hopewell mound site in Ohio.

It took two weeks and more than 160 volunteers to excavate the earth lodge. It's a job that requires more than a map and a shovel. Virginia Wulfkuhle, public archaeologist with the Kansas State Historical Society, explains the many-step process.

They might be amateurs, but that doesn't mean the hobby archaeologists who come to the Kansas Archeology Training Programs are less passionate. From a few days to two weeks, the volunteers range from school aged to retirees. And some even have to take vacation from their day jobs. Lawrence resident Allen Wechert talks about what has kept him coming back to the digs year after year.

As archaeologists dig deeper, they take more precautions in making sure they don't discard valuable finds. Two volunteers with the Kansas Anthropological Association tell us how water screening helps them ensure even the tiniest artifact gets uncovered.

Up until the second to last day, junior Alex Norton hadn't found much during her time at KU's anthropology field school. But then the anthropology and biology major struck the equivalent of archaeological gold when her trowel came across a part of a gun.

In the 1960s, state archaeologist Tom Witty began excavating the remains of a burnt earth lodge. The findings are the basis of the Pawnee Indian Museum, which sits right next door to this summer's dig. Site administrator Richard Gould talks about what those findings tell us about the Pawnee Indians.

Donna Roper, a research associate professor at Kansas State University, says Pawnee Indian villages such as the one in Republic County are a rare find. Researchers are returning to the site in hopes of unearthing artifacts that will give more clues as to when the site was occupied and how much interaction the native population had with the arriving Europeans.